European Network of Election Європейська мережа організацій Monitoring Organizations зі спостереження за виборами International Observation Mission to Ukraine Міжнародна місія зі спостереження в Україні Local Elections 2015 Місцеві вибори 2015 Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions Kyiv, 27 October 2015 The first round of Ukrainian local elections was mainly held in a peaceful environment and in line with most international standards and national legislation. However, the politicized composition and conduct of a number of territorial election commissions, supplemented with the complexity of the new law leave space for concern. The European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) is a network of 22 leading election monitoring organizations from 18 countries of Europe and Central Asia, including three European Union countries. This is the tenth Election Observation Mission by ENEMO to Ukraine, which began with the arrival of 8 core team members to Kyiv, on 1 October in order to observe the Local Elections 2015. ENEMO additionally deployed 50 long-term observers (LTOs) countrywide to observe and assess the electoral process in their respective regions for the elections on 25 October 2015, as well as the eventual second round of elections. 180 short-term observers (STOs) have been deployed to observe the first round of elections to Ukraine. Together with mobile LTOs, ENEMO had 93 teams in the field, which have monitored the opening of 93 PECs, voting in 1211 PECs and the closing of 93 PECs. This preliminary report is based on the ENEMO observers’ findings from the field, where they focused on the work of election administration bodies, the conduct of election participants, the overall conduct of elections during Election day in terms of opening, voting, counting and the transferring of election materials, election-related complaints and appeals and other election related activities. This publication has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of ENEMO and can in no way reflect the views of the European Union Preliminary conclusions The elections on 25 October were mainly held in a peaceful atmosphere and in line with most international standards, with occasional breaches of the established procedure by a number of PEC members, mainly due to lack of information about certain procedures. The politicized composition of TECs, combined with an inadequate understanding of the new law and occasional technical difficulties have led to a number of questionable decisions by numerous TECs, including the registration of candidates, printing of ballot papers, counting of results, etc. To that end, similar issues have led to the cancelation of elections in the cities of Mariupol and Krasnoarmiysk. The complexity of the Law, high number of voters per PEC, inadequate knowledge of all PEC members regarding newly established procedures, a high number of election processes and votes to be counted and tabulated have caused a slight delay in the counting of votes in most parts of the country. ENEMO praises the involvement and professionalism of the CEC with regards to providing explanations of the new Law to actors of the electoral process. The composition and capacities of PEC members have been questioned by a number of interlocutors, due to a high number of PEC members not being appointed by local parties/candidates, constant changes of appointed PEC members by respective subjects that have nominated them and lack of training for newly appointed PEC members. The constant changes of TEC and PEC compositions by local political parties that have nominated them have undermined the entire process of training commissioners organized by the CEC and TECs. Most political campaigning materials were removed by Friday midnight, however occasional campaigning activities were noticed in most parts of Ukraine by a number of candidates and parties that have violated the electoral silence. Ukrainian media suffers from high partisanship and lack of autonomy from both political and business interests, which affects the editorial policy of the media outlets. Long Term Observers of ENEMO have reported biased media coverage, favoring one or another candidate or party, electoral advertising during news editions, or electoral advertising materials not clearly identified as such. The practice of paid-for news articles also continues to be widespread. The overall campaign can be largely described as mildly intense and characterized by a moderate interest of voters in political events, platforms and candidates. Nevertheless, relatively isolated cases of violence against certain party activists and candidates have been noticed and reported. ENEMO Election Observation Mission Ukraine, Local Elections, 25 October 2015 Preliminary Report (27 October 2015) P a g e | 2 Most violations during the electoral campaigns were related to early campaigning, indirect vote-buying, placing of posters at forbidden locations, distribution of campaigning materials without proper marking, negative (black) PR and similar violations. Numerous cases of the abuse of state/local resources have also been reported. The fact that the new law does not provide for any public funds for local elections to any of the contestants, different access to campaign funding and lack of transparency regarding some sources of funding of a number of candidates/parties has been identified by numerous interlocutors of ENEMO as a strong point of concern. Most electoral candidates have been approved and registered to run in elections on time by a majority of TECs. Number of TECsrefused to register certain candidates and not always on legal grounds at times even declining to respect court orders and CEC decisions. The CEC has terminated powers of all or several TEC members earlier in number of TECs. On several occasions CEC had to register candidates itself. However, due to a long registration process, a number of candidates had a shorter period of time for official election campaigning. ENEMO would like to commend the CEC for its professionalism and impartiality in taking actions towards certain TECs, related to the process of registration of candidates running for elections, so that the legal provisions were somewhat respected and relevant election subjects were given the possibility to run for elections. The 2015 local elections received a high attention from the international community, the CEC has approved the request of 14 international organizations, 14 foreign countries, as well as 83 domestic organization as accredited observers. In total 1,554 international observers were accredited, this number is around three times higher than the number of observers for the elections of 2010. ENEMO Election Observation Mission Ukraine, Local Elections, 25 October 2015 Preliminary Report (27 October 2015) P a g e | 3 PRELIMINARY FINDINGS Background The first round of Regular 1 Local elections in Ukraine was held on 25 October 2015and under the new Law on Local Elections 2. Based on the resolution of the National Parliament 3 and by decisions of the Central Election Commission (CEC), local elections were not held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol, as well as parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, due to the fact that they either belong to currently occupied territories (as declared by the Verkhovna Rada), or territories where requirements for holding of elections in line with international standards are not likely to be met mostly due to security reasons. Elections at Mariupol and Krasnoarmiysk were later cancelled due to several reasons, mostly related to lack of professionalism of TEC members and ballot printing. Only several months before elections, in a rather non-transparent manner, the Parliament of Ukraine (Verkhovna Rada) has adopted the new Law on Local Elections (LLE), which imposes considerable changes compared to previous election laws in Ukraine 4. The new law has introduced significant novelties and changes and there was very little time for all election process participants to familiarize themselves with the new election system, as well as its possible outcomes, especially territorial and precinct election commissions and voters. The new law failed to introduce adequate mechanisms to cope with the most shortcomings reported by ENEMO and other international and domestic stakeholders during previous elections, especially those related to the level of politicization of the electoral process 5, inadequate regulations regarding financing of political parties, abuse of state resources and election campaigning; registration of candidates; the parallel systems of election dispute resolutions, media conduct; high number of voters per PEC, lack of professionalization of election commissions and other. Other relevant electoral laws are being drafted at the moment that might provide for a legal framework that could regulate such issues in a more adequate manner, especially the Law on Financing of Political Parties 6. Positive effects of the newly adopted legal changes are mainly reflected by a higher legitimacy of chosen Mayors in cities with 90, 000 or more voters; higher level of decentralization of the entire process, including the territorial decentralization, election administration and political parties; higher inter-party competition among deputy candidates; as well as wider rights of international observers. Also, the first time legally prescribed 1Also the First local elections